Most heavily traded stocks of the week

Anyone who sold their M&S shares early in the week may, as you read this, be kicking themselves. After another dismal week of grim news and uninspiring figures, the deeply unpopular retailer surprised the City by revealing its new star player was George Davies, of Next and Asda fame.

The City responded to the prospect of the design supremo sprinkling some of his magic over its ladies collection by adding £500m on to the share price. Needless to say, the stock was a big seller with Stocktrade earlier in the week, but no-one was buying. Charles Schwab's traffic figures show M&S was its third heaviest seller. having lain below the 200p mark, the share price ended the week past the 240p mark. A week is a long time in High Street retailing.

Despite a vague resurgence in tech stocks, Psion took a hammering after it unveiled a toe-curling profit warning based on the fact that monolithic US firm Motorola had pulled out of a key joint development project. Psion shares fell 20% and it became the third most popular stock with both profit-takers and buyers, according to Stocktrade. A similar story emerged at Charles Schwab.

Dear old British Telecom was a heavy seller with Stocktrade, after a bruising week during which the industry regulator extended domestic price caps. Sirs Bonfield and Vallance also faced the wrath of disgruntled shareholders who have seen their investments halved in the last year.

And Iceland made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. A profits warning, followed by the resignation of chief Malcolm Walker and City speculation that the frozen food group is ripe for a takeover made it a hit with both buyers and sellers using Stocktrade and Charles Schwab. Iceland's joint broker ABN Amro cut clean profit forecasts for the group to £60m for the current year and £51m for the following year.

But the techs and telcos dominated trading, with ARM, Bookham, Baltimore, Marconi, Kingston, Imagination and Vodafone all dominating the tops of both popular buys and sells tables.